Transcript

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Things That Make Ya Go, Hmmm!Learning about Phrases

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A phrase is a group of words that acts as a part of speech rather than as a complete sentence. You alreadyknow the function of a noun,adjective, or adverb—a phrase simplytakes on one of those functions. Aphrase does not have a subject or averb. The two main kinds of phrases areprepositional phrases and verbal phrases.

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Another kind of phrase is the verbal—infinitive, gerunds, & participles. As you can tell from the name, they are related to verbs.They look verby—yes,that’s a word —but neveract as verbs. Instead theyact as nouns, adjectives, oradverbs. There are three types of verbalswe’ll study: participial phrases, infinitivephrases, and gerund phrases.

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Lying on her bed, Shanna ordered Chinese food.The socks lost in the dryer were her favorites.

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Screaming with laughter, the students hid under their desks.Kolby, left behind at school, wept over his homework.

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See how each participial phrase tells ussomething about a noun? Lying on herbed describes Shanna and lost in the dryer describes the socks. Notice that Shannais the subject of theverb ordered; socks isthe subject of were.So lying, screaming, left, and lost have no subject; instead

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of acting as verbs, they aredescribing the subject of thesentence. Recognizing participial phrases is crucial in avoiding the dreaded misplaced modifier or dangling participle. Hey,that’s pretty simple.

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 A modifier is a word or group of words that describes another. Modifiers can be adjectives: Keng made a brilliant statement (adjective) (noun) Modifiers can be adverbs: Alex bowled wonderfully (verb) (adverb) Modifiers can be clauses or phrases: The girl who snuck out her window was my date. (noun) (Clause modifies noun = adjective clause)

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Another type of misplaced modifier is thedangling participial phrase. Participles, as you recall, are verb forms endingwith -ing in thepresent tense and-d or -ed in the past tense. A few participles end in -t orhave irregular forms.Participle examples: dribbling, skating, scaled, burned or burnt

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Combine a participle with other words tocreate a participial phrase. Remember, participial phrases act as adjectives because they modify a noun in asentence.Participle Phrase examples: filled with hope cleaning the bathroom jumping overboard

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When the preposition to is followed by a noun, it is a prepositional phrase: to the beach. When to isfollowed by averb—to run, to see, to feel —it is an infinitive. Why does this matter? The rules thatgovern infinitives are differentfrom rules that governprepositional phrases; sinceinfinitives are closely related to verbs, they can have a passive or activevoice as well as